Hi All,

Obviously it seems a fair few peeps are into their photography here so would appreciate some advice....

Been mulling over getting myself a Digital SLR, but with very little experience of the camera market I have no idea what is good for what price . I'm not looking for a grands worth of camera with every gadget under the sun, just something I can play around with and get used to really.

There were a few Nikon's and stuff I was looking at around 300 quid but any recomendations much appreciated!

The D40 or D50 would probably suit your needs if you dont want to spend top dollar just yet, they have al the bells and whistles you'd expect for the money as well as universal fitment on the lenses. although the D40 has a different system for focusong so it has the motor in the lens instead. that means limited availibility of lenses that will auto focus but still usable., the D50 on the other hand is fully compatable with all other nikon lenses.,
Nikon have a new range comming out pretty soon which includes replacements the D40 and D80 so id imagine there will be a few bagains to be had when the newer stuff comes out.,

thanks vtec, the D50 actually looks fairly good, and at 300 quid can't really complain! I'm in no rush so may well wait for the new range and see what ebay bargains come up.

Is Nikon the best option then?

well i would choose nikon since ive used a few of them but i dont have any experience with canon (best competitor) so cant really reccommend them., I think most in this photography section are nikon users too.,

I'm a Canon man but that was down to what was available when I was after a camera. I just bought a backup camera (Canon EOS-350D kit) for £250 which for a five month old mint camera is a good deal.

A great forum can be found here http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/

The classifieds show an EOS-400D with lots of kit for £300. It's suddenly become a very expensive hobby for me.

I'm bought my first DSLR a year ago, was lucky enough to find the D40 on promotional offer, got it for 80 quid less. Its given me great results every time, and its easy to use, even when going fully manual.
I would recommend it any time. There's the D40x too, which was released shortly I purchased my D40, but I'm not sure if its worth spending the extra cash on it if you're still a beginner.
Personally I would go for a D40 and then buy a better body later on when you're ready to go pro

I was always a 'canon man', for maybe 15 years, though i cut my teeth on old M42 mount stuff (though i think the old FD lenses were far superior to the EF lenses) but have recently defected to nikon, D40 is a very good camera, with some good deals. In truth , there are no 'poor' digitial slr's out there, I would get into the shops, havea chat, try a few, if they arent prepared to spend a sensible amount of time with you, then try another camera shop

what sold the d40 to me was that friends have an eos400d, olympus e500, and nikon d40, we all met up and compared results from the cameras under identical conditions. In outdoor shots, there was very little in it, there was more variation from camera shake than cameras themselves, though the e500 and d40 did have marginally better contrast. we then did some indoor shots, I do a bit from time to time on ebay (jknstaffs), and I wanted a digital slr to have more control over photographs for ebay items etc, as much as anything else. As a subject, we chose a NAD monitor series amplifier, which has a grey front panel, with white and feint red writing screen printed onto it. The nikon was the one that consistently exposed the image with flash 'just so' so everything was legible, and nothing was burned out, the olympus was quite good, but needed adjustment in photoshop, and the canon tended to loose the detail in the writing as it overexposed the flash. This is adjustable on the camera however.

if you buy any of the current digital slr's, they are all competent, but please do try them in the shop, no matter how good the spec, if it's uncomfortable to hold, and you end up with camera shake, any slight technical advantage will be more than lost, the single most thing you can do to improve any image is to ensure the camera does not move during exposure.

happy shopping, digital slr's are in reality astonishing value for money, for example, in around 1994, i bought a new canon EOS100 SLR and it was £600 with a standard zoom (almost a months' wages back then) and the following summer, I bought a 10 year old canon T90 with a 50mm fixed lens, which was £300, the price of nikon d40 now (with cashback, it works out about £270)
Get out there, have a play

Personally I would recommend an Olympus E410 and the 'standard' lens is exceptionally good quality, especially when compared to what comes bundled with Canon and Nikon cameras. Its a fantastic light weight camera and and some of the best glass on the market is available for it.

Best advice would be go and hold them all. If it feels good in your hand then that is the one to buy. As the camera body themselves at this level are all very similar.

stumac1985 said:

Personally I would recommend an Olympus E410 and the 'standard' lens is exceptionally good quality, especially when compared to what comes bundled with Canon and Nikon cameras. Its a fantastic light weight camera and and some of the best glass on the market is available for it.

Best advice would be go and hold them all. If it feels good in your hand then that is the one to buy. As the camera body themselves at this level are all very similar.

Click to expand...

trouble with the olympus is that you have limilted lens options., if you have a nikon or canon you can pick up used lenses very easily on ebay and stuff., there everywhere.,

vtec said:

trouble with the olympus is that you have limilted lens options., if you have a nikon or canon you can pick up used lenses very easily on ebay and stuff., there everywhere.,

Click to expand...

I dont find the Olympus lens options limited at all. Olympus make a very good range from standard to very high quality and then you have the leica lenses above that and a lot of the Sigma lenses are also available. Limited lenses is now very much a myth when it comes to Olympus.

A good few things to mull over then, thanks for all the advice, I think it's time to get down the shop and start playing about with them, get a feel for it as it were!

Sony Alpha A100 with an 18-70 kit lens is £330 at Argos at the moment. I got one in Summer '07 and it's been very, very good indeed.

FuzzyPanda said:

Sony Alpha A100 with an 18-70 kit lens is £330 at Argos at the moment. I got one in Summer '07 and it's been very, very good indeed.

Click to expand...

Where did you see that? £499 on the website . I thought I got mine cheap, obviously not cheap enough..

Cheers,

Plug

pretty much pick any that takes your fancy, all the base market dSLR's are pretty good nowadays, theres none that have any particular problems (till you drop it or freeze it).

features/bonus's of each brand...


nikon, repuation, huge aftermarket and OE lense choice
canon, reputation, huge aftermarket and OE lense choice (but canons are better, not biased atall here )
olympus, lots of dealers nowadays, lense choice is OK, and chances are you'll be fine, they also make THE widest lense on the market (7mm), and their OE fit lense I would rate as the best out of all the lenses that these cameras come as std with.
pentax, price (better value), shake reduction (VERY USEFULL< its in the body & lense, so you can shoot handheld with ease in low light/indoors) and anti dust (althoguh how well it actually works I don't know). lense choice, aftermarket theres plenty, but more toward the tele end, the wide end is pretty sparse, sigma 10-20mm IS the only choice (but its good so don't worry).



basically, go to a shop that has all of them, try them out and see which one you work out quickest.

also bear in mind the std plastic lense that comes with your camera will be barely enough to make it work/ they're OK, better than a compacts lense, but not much better. idea is to get it working and give you something to play with whilst you save up for a proper lense, bit like car tyres, when you get a new car it has tyres (to stop the sparks and damage) but they're never the best tyres around and probablywon't suit your driving style


except the olympus, who's lense is of much higher quality

All olympus cameras have the anti-dust feature and have done for at least a decade. They also have image stabilisation in the E510 upwards

a good few options, thanks ppl. Had a play with a mates Cannon the other day, he had a macro(?) lens, the shots were awesome, definatly need to get me an SLR!

stumac1985 said:

All olympus cameras have the anti-dust feature and have done for at least a decade. They also have image stabilisation in the E510 upwards

Click to expand...

image stablisation should be in the lens though, really

Plug said:

Where did you see that? £499 on the website . I thought I got mine cheap, obviously not cheap enough..

Cheers,

Plug

Click to expand...

http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Produ...ography>C$cip=1500006551.Sony+photography.htm

arc said:

image stablisation should be in the lens though, really

Click to expand...

Why?

IMO image stabilisation is actually better off being in the body. This way I dont need to spend thousands of pounds replacing lenses just for IS as all my lenses automatically have it. I dread to think how much would need spending to replace the lenses in my house for IS versions, easily in excess of £10k!